Get to Know Design Freedom on Shopify
After years of working on Shopify and helping designers bring their designs to life through many store builds, I’ve documented everything I know and put it into a course!
When Chloe Ford and I first got together to build Luna Templates, we spent 9 months creating a library of pre-built Shopify section templates for designers. The goal was to make creating beautiful Shopify stores easy and affordable. A course was always in the plan for us as well, and in September 2022 we finally launched it.
Our course, Design Freedom on Shopify, is a course created for the designer who wants to advance their skills and become a Shopify expert. We teach students how to master the business side of working with clients, the web design side of designing for ecommerce and Shopify, and how to customize themes to bring their designs to life.
We’re teaching you everything we learned in our businesses that took years of trial and error, and wrapped it all up into a package so that others can fast track their way to becoming a Shopify expert.
Why Shopify & ecommerce?
Shopify was actually the first project I ever took on as a freelancer. I then dabbled in other CMSs but was increasingly drawn to learning about ecommerce.
The reason? I love entrepreneurship, and working with others who are passionate about building their business excites me. It takes a lot of guts to not pursue the 9-5 route, and instead, to pursue a passion and grow a business. And I love supporting people who have done that. That’s why I was so drawn to Shopify. Because it lets anyone start a business in just a few hours, but has the potential to grow to a 9-figure business.
I also felt like Shopify let me practice so many different skills: design, development, marketing and strategy, and the chance to work on so many different things at once made work fun for me.
The teachers of Design Freedom on Shopify
The course has two brilliant instructors (if I do say so myself), whose skills complement each other perfectly. Chloe on the business and design side, and myself on the development and store maintenance side. I love that Chloe and I both have different types of clients and experiences so we always have interesting insights to share.
Chloe is a graphic designer with over 10 years of experience. She’s known for creating online worlds for bestselling beauty brands and creating digital experiences that go beyond aesthetics. She has designed Shopify stores with $250k launches, working with businesses such as KJH.Brand and Homebody, and brands that are stocked in retail giants such as Target and Ulta. Running Studio PLUSH, Chloe has mastered pitching and pricing. Her confidence is contagious and she motivates students to push themselves to charge high rates without fear, and design strategic stores that make sales.
Hana specializes in Shopify development, bringing designers’ visions to life with clean code and customizations that are easy for clients to edit. She has built Shopify websites for multi-million dollar companies such as Berlinger Jewelry, as well as trendy food brands such as Heraclea. Working on over 50 Shopify stores over the past 6 years means Hana has experience with an extensive range of client needs. Dedicated to student success, she simplifies coding into clear, accessible lessons and is always on hand to help students through their coding issues.
Expert Guest Speakers
In addition to the course curriculum, we have monthly guest speakers from some AMAZING experts in the industry. Some of the speakers we’ve had have presented about:
How to price creative work - Kei Maye (Creative Champs)
Client Magnet Workshop - Kelsey McCormick (Coming Up Roses)
Own Your Design Superpower - Cat Byrne (Daring Designers Club)
Putting the AI in Shopify - Lauren deVane (The Bemused Studio)
Transformaing Websites into Branded Spaces - Lola Adewuya (The Brand Doula)
5 Figure Packaging Principles - Laura Evans (Our Kind)
Build your Boss-Base with Notion - Frances Matthews (The Notion Bar)
And there are always more coming!
These workshops aim to build student confidence, fill in any gaps related to growing a business, and teach about current topics.
How we get students results
The objective of the course is to fast-track students’ learning to becoming a Shopify expert. We’re teaching everything it took us years to learn through our projects. To do this, the course takes students step by step to achieve 3 milestones on their way to becoming a Shopify Expert:
Milestone 1: Profitable Client Process
Module 1 covers how to scope for profit, charge a premium for your Shopify design expertise and have a smooth client experience every time.
We put this module at the beginning of our course so that students can start marketing their Shopify design services as soon as possible, therefore making their investment back quickly.
Milestone 2: Design for Conversion
Modules 2-4 cover how to design ecommerce stores for conversion (for making sales!), and how to design for Shopify stores specifically, while prioritizing PROFIT. This means doing things in a way that takes the least amount of time but delivers the best results.
By the end of these modules, students have up to 3 Shopify portfolio pieces, so they’re ready to show their expertise on their own websites.
If students have chosen the Accelerator Track, their course lessons end here, and their learning continues in the community space. If students have chosen the Expert Track, they’ll move on to Milestone 3.
Milestone 3: Confident Coding
In Modules 5-8, students learn how to customize any theme without limits. They’ll learn to understand Shopify’s code and bring any designs to life by building their own sections.
From these modules, they’ll gain an understanding of HTML, CSS, Liquid and JSON which they will use to customize existing sections, and build their own sections.
By the end of these modules, students will have a semi-custom portfolio piece (a theme with lots of coded customizations) and 2 custom sections they can use in any project.
Project based learning
By the end of the course, students have up to 4 Shopify website portfolio pieces, and 2 custom built sections so that they can demonstrate their work, and confidently market their services without ever having worked with a Shopify client. By being able to demonstrate their expertise from the start, they avoid the trap of doing free or discounted work. Just because you don’t have client experience on a platform doesn’t mean that the rest of your skillset should be discounted!
Course Timeline
We know that the average course completion rate (across all courses on Teachable) is approximately 15%. Student success and results are super important to us, so we do our best to create accountability in the course.
One way we try to help students keep on track with their learning is with a suggested course timeline. This timeline suggests dedicating one day per week for 13 weeks to the course, and clearly states actionable points which are both watching the course content, and taking action within students’ own business to move toward providing Shopify services.
We want students to make their investment back as soon as possible by getting their first project!
What I teach
The modules that I teach cover theme customization with code.
In Module 5, students learn the fundamentals of HTML, CSS, Liquid (Shopify’s coding language) fundamentals and JSON. This includes special considerations for how to use CSS specifically on Shopify, and how to add new section settings to the theme editor. Students familiarize themselves with Shopify’s theme code so they can confidently hop in and make any edits they want.
In Module 6, we go through a library of 20 tutorials, putting HTML, CSS and Liquid into action to make various theme customizations. These are all the customizations that I most commonly make when building stores.
In Module 7, students use the skills they practiced in Module 6 to build a store themselves. First, they’re told the process I follow in a Shopify build. Then they’re given the Cocomo store design to try building themselves, with some video guidance explaining how to handle unexpected situations that aren’t explained in the tutorials.
In Module 8, students learn how to turn any HTML & CSS into a customizable Shopify section with block and section settings. Students see how to plan the development of a section, and then they build 2 Shopify sections, a hero section and a testimonial section, both of which they are free to add to their own code library and use in projects.
The amazing instructor support
I know that learning to code isn’t easy, and that most people need support in order not to tear their hair out, and actually take little steps to improvement. Without those feelings of accomplishment, people quit.
A little of my own story… my real start with web development was when I took a web development bootcamp. This is an intense 3-month program where you learn software development very quickly, and get you a job fast.That’s great in principle, but I knew that I wanted to freelance and have my own business. As I tried to continue my learning by myself, I was running into way too many problems, with no one to ask for help. I was tearing my hair out and literally in tears of frustration when I couldn’t solve something for days.
I thought, how can I ever make a freelance career of this when I can’t solve these problems and have no one to ask for help? So I quit. It’s embarrassing, really. To have put all that hard work in only for it to go to waste, as I don’t use ANY of the skills I learned there today. All because I didn’t have the support system in place to help me after the 3 months were up.
That’s why in our course we offer a FULL year of support, to help students through these moments. Both of us are available throughout the week to help provide guidance and point them in the right direction. The ‘code-help’ channel in the community is a popular one, and it’s always so nice to hear the relief from our students when they figure something out with just a little guidance:
We truly want our students to succeed and are there with them every step of the way!
Why our course is different
Prospective students sometimes ask us, what’s the difference between your course and X course. There are a few things that stand out:
Two experts. Students learn from both a business savy & graphic designer teacher, and a developer who has worked on 100+ stores. This combined experience means we have a LOT of knowledge to share, and we’re open books.
We focus on maximizing profit. Our whole client process begins with confidently quoting what you’re worth, then choosing the right theme for the project which is going to save you HOURS of work and allow you to avoid hiring a developer, and how to work quickly and efficiently so that you create amazing results for your client in the least time possible.
We teach you the things you NEED to know to create the most common designs. We have 20+ mini-tutorials on how to create specific theme customizations that I get asked for again and again, on any theme. We don’t believe that one theme is a good fit for every project, nor do all clients start with the same theme, so we focus on teaching skills that will transfer to any project.
We live & breathe e-commerce. We continue to work with clients, as this helps keep us up to date and understand the current landscape of what store owners are experiencing. This knowledge of still working in the field allows us to share our experiences and learnings with our students on a regular basis.
We’re constantly updating ourselves on consumer trends, marketing ideas, analytics an entrepreneurshop and more, and we share these things with our students. We beleive that to provide the best service to your customers, you should be aware of the issues and opportunities in ecommerce. We say that our course makes you a Shopify expert, and with that comes an e-commerce obsession.
Who is the course right for?
When we initially started the course, we thought it was only for web and graphic designers. But our audience soon told us otherwise, and we realized that learning about e-commerce and Shopify websites isn’t only for web designers.
We’ve had over 70 students take our course, here are what just some of them do for work:
Jenny & Kate are e-commerce managers for nationally-known brands.
Jess is an email marketing pro who exclusively offers Website & Klaviyo VIP packages for $2500/day.
Amanda offers packaging design and wants to consider how to design for both online & in-store.
Noemi & Audrey are store owners who wants to be able to improve their own websites.
Elli is a full-stack web developer who wanted to learn more about e-commerce specifically and how to best work with clients to start his agency.
Madison, Jada, Kim, Francesca and more all offer Shopify design services to clients.
They all do completely different things on a day-to-day basis, within the same industry. Learning about Shopify and e-commerce conversion techniques is a transferrable skill.
Go ahead, Google search “e-commerce jobs” and see the range of positions that come up. It’s a BROAD range of titles, but they have things in common. They usually want proficiency in an e-commerce platform, understanding of web design, conversion tactics, customer retention, email marketing, and more.
Just because you might not call yourself a “web designer” doesn’t mean what you’ll learn in our course isn’t for you.
Some of your favorite brands are looking for an e-commerce expert right now. The best investment you can make is in yourself. Why not do it?
Why do students join?
When students join, we have them fill out a form describing their current skill level and their goals. One specific question we ask is, “What are your goals or reasons for taking the course?” Here’s what some of them have said:
“To position myself as an expert Shopify designer and have a waitlist of clients ready to work with me based on that expertise.”
“To become an expert on Shopify Design, so that I can eventually leave my 9-5 and start my own Design Business.”
“Launch my business supporting sustainable ecommerce businesses, go freelance full time and make $$$ so I can retire at 40.”
“Start a shopify website design + development studio and build custom Shopify websites for my own sun care brand and hair accessory brand.”
“Need to prepare for a design overhaul at work, looking for more expertise around customizations.”
“I want to feel full confident creating bespoke Shopify store. I want to feel confident to charge £5K+”
“To learn how to really customize Shopify sites in order to attract food and beverage brands that are looking for something more custom for their brand.”
“I'm a designer and all around creative. I would love to add web design to my skillset and Shopify in particular seems to be what a lot of people use. I want to be able to use creative code to make Shopify sites stand apart from others.”
“To be able to code and design without a developer, to design well, to charge more for premium e-commerce sites, to have higher profits in my web design area.”
“I'm a Squarespace website designer and my niche is wellness industry (mostly service-base business), but I also receive some really interesting projects that would better fit on a Shopify framework (for a eCommerce oriented business). I have to decline them because I don't design/develop on Shopify (yet) and it breaks my heart 'cause some of those project are SO amazing! I would love to offer my professional web design services on Shopify too :) This is my goal!”
“I'm pivoting from branding to web design - I have 6 years of experience in WordPress web development however haven't yet explored different platforms. I know Shopify is becoming the industry standard for E-Commerce so I want to be able to offer this too!”
“I have been dreaming of building a creative agency where my husband and I offer branding, web, and content creation services. So with this course, I am hoping to develop my web design skills!”
“Looking to improve my Shopify offerings and move into more of a focus on designing for e-commerce”
“I want to better understand the coding side of Shopify - being able to do everything myself and not get stuck all the time.”
Most students want to develop their skillset so that they can become experts and charge more for their services, but many are also store owners themselves and are looking to be able to independently design, build and maintain their stores.
Ultimately, we want to take ours students from a designer that may lack confidence in the solution they’re currently able to offer clients, to a designer that feels informed about best practices in ecommerce and Shopify and equiped to create any website they envision.
What our students have accomplished
We’re so proud of our graduated students as well! Here are what just a few of our students have achieved since taking the course:
Kim launched Design For Good Club which is Brand & Website Design for Conscious and Sustainable Brands. She has been absolutely killing it on LinkedIn as well!
Jada transformed her business by honing in on creating a standout client process and mastering her technical skills to create strategic stores for her clients. She rebranded as Jal Studios and has been rapidly growing her audience and client base.
Francesa has become a complete trailblazer in Italy’s e-commerce space, by offering Shopify where the norm is using Wordpress. She’s been using her TikTok account to find clients by creating super engaging content.
Pip has been launching a new website every month it seems, and each time implementing a little more customization in the code.
We have little wins happening all the time in the community, and we’re always cheering on our students!
Course Updates & Responding to Student Feedback
At the end of each module, students can fill out a feedback form about what they enjoyed, and what they felt the module was missing. Following this feedback, we’ve been adding new lessons to cover additional topics that are asked about, and providing additional resources in our database as a quick reference for students.
We’ve also made the course a lot more hands-on with monthly live calls to connect with others in the community, expert guest speakers, and frequent chats in the community.
The course continues to evolve regularly. We’ve listened to the feedback, made observations about the questions being asked and the progress of students, and we have some hard work ahead of us to add new content to help students get even better results.
Interested?
If you’re interested in becoming a Shopify expert, watch our free Shopify training. It’s just a snippet of what you’ll learn in the course. If what you learn there interests you, then Design Freedom on Shopify might be right for you! Just send us a message directly from the replay and we’ll be happy to answer any questions.
